Side note: Tatung makes some pretty amazing rice cookers. My family has used the same one for over 40 years now, and it still cooks as well as ever.
http://www.amazon.com/Tatung-Tac-11kn-Stainless-Steel-Cooker...
I grew up with Tatung rice cookers. They used to last forever - only get replaced when owners get tired of looking at them or they become too dirty. I replaced mine with this stainless steel rice cooker about 1.5 years ago thinking it will really last forever since it's stainless steel (the old ones were made out of aluminum). Unfortunately, it stopped working a few days ago.
I just couldn't believe it, I opened it up (I am a hand-on electrical engineer) and found the heating element to be the culprit. Tatung no longer uses solid metal heating element, instead, Tatung uses a much inferior heating element made out of a sandwich of 3 to 4 layers of thin circular heat-resistant cardboard. With metal wires (the heating element) looped around these circular cardboard. After probing a bit, I found where the metal wire broke.
Called Tatung customer support and was told that they can't sell heating element because of liability issue. It'll cost $40 for them the repair it but I will need to ship it to them.
Side note: curse Wade and Giles for making everyone mispronounce this company's name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_unity
There's some lengthy (English) discussion on the term in this book:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Chinese-Revolution-Historical-Pers...